• Manage a portfolio of projects through articulated programs; and
• Manage those individual projects at their performance interface – not their technical interface.

These missions are carried out through, and governed by, a set of flexible processes:

• Strategic level planning and program development. Providing long–range planning and roadmaps for developing IT projects that benefit the organization, its customers and shareholders. Program Management activities build the business case for programs, including cost estimates and measurable goals and objectives.
• Tactical management of selected programs. Depending on the size of the program, either a single project manager or a team is assigned to the functional department through final delivery and post–project activities.

Our field experience, in a variety of business and technical domains, has shown that a successful PMO deployment must:

• Connect each strategic objective to a project or program deliverable.
• Focus on risk and opportunity management, using portfolio management processes to address uncertainty by making explicit the potential losses (risks) and potential gains (opportunities).
• Provide a clear and actionable path between strategy and execution, ensuring adaptation to the changing needs of the enterprise.

Enterprise Program Management Office (EPMO) Tools Selection
The tools that form a single management platform for enterprise programs must provide insight to the performance of individual projects and their portfolios. These tools integrate cost, schedule and technical performance measures.

EPMO enables forecasting of future performance, portfolio management activities and the connection between portfolios and their projects with the business strategies.

Lewis & Fowler’s proven methodology includes a best practice set of requirements based specifically on the EPMO tool market, RFP request model, vendor selection scoring model, and an EPMO financial comparison model. All of our methodology ties directly back to an overall corporate, IT and PMO strategy, which insures adoption of the tool based on your specific organizational needs.


Enterprise Portfolio Management
The Enterprise Portfolio Management process allows companies to choose which projects to proceed with based on factors such as the project's overall business benefit and technical risk. Identifying these project tradeoffs helps deliver IT value that fulfills overall strategic objectives.

Lewis & Fowler consultants work with clients to develop an internal portfolio management process that empowers their clients to deliver projects on budget and on strategy, while accommodating the realities of their company's unique culture.

Our approach to process development helps other internal departments understand the budget limitations of the IT department and what is realistically achievable.


Program Management
Managing programs is not the same as managing multiple projects. A program is a collection of individual projects with inherent conflicts for resources, budget, executive mind share and technical capacity. Our approach to Program Management applies project portfolio management to identify and manage these conflicts. In addition, program level Earned Value and Earned Schedule is applied to oversee the performance of the entire program as well as its constituent projects.


Earned Value Management
Earned Value Management is the “Gold Standard” project management process applicable to enterprise projects and portfolios of IT projects. Earned Value Management provides the means for IT departments to spend budgets wisely when executing a project.

Earned Value compares three pieces of project information:

• How much have we planned to accomplish at this point in time?
• How much have we spent to accomplish the work up to this point in time?
• What is the value, in terms of the baseline budget, for the work accomplished at this juncture?

Lewis & Fowler consultants calculate a project's performance using a Budgeted Cost for Work Schedule (BCWS), the Actual Cost of Work Performed (ACWP) and the Physical Percent Complete, plus any cost and schedule variances. This information can then be used to forecast the future cost and schedule performance of the project.

Earned Value will take your organization from simply reacting to past performance to confidently guiding the future performance of the project.

Earned Value can predict project performance with as little as 15% of the project having been performed. The application of this tool to standard project management, as well as project recovery efforts, sets Lewis & Fowler apart in the enterprise IT consulting domain.

A second approach – now entering practice – is Earned Schedule, which accomplishes for the project schedule what Earned Value accomplishes for the project cost. Both of these key foundational approaches are applicable to a variety of project types.


Capabilities Based Planning
Capabilities Based Planning asks and answers the question: To fulfill our business strategy, what business capabilities do we need, and at what time?

We define Capabilities Based Planning as:

“A method that involves a functional analysis of operational requirements to identify the needed capabilities based on the required work tasks. Once the required capability inventory is defined, the most cost effective and efficient options to satisfy the requirements are identified. Planning during times of uncertainty provides capabilities suitable for a wide range of modern business challenges and circumstances, while working within a flexible economic framework.”

The Lewis & Fowler approach to Capabilities Based Planning works in tandem with our Balanced Scorecard methodology, providing a clear and concise description of Done for your Enterprise IT projects.

The failure of many enterprise IT projects starts with the inability to define the meaning of Done and to connect Done with the definition of Progress. Defining the drivers for an enterprise project's progress measurement starts with understanding which capabilities are needed to successfully fulfill an IT strategy. Understanding the risks that threaten the delivery of these capabilities is at the core of the Lewis & Fowler project delivery method.

The entire team at Lewis & Fowler recognizes the interdependence of your systems, policies, organization and support processes in the delivery of business capability. We examine options and tradeoffs among these capabilities in terms of performance, cost and risk, plus we identify optimum development investments.